There's Nothing Like the Flu...

February 20, 2024

Beloved:
          Great is my gratitude to have only had the respiratory strain of the flu these past eight days.  I’ve been able to eat and drink and, hopefully, I should be nearly through it.  Thanks to my kids for walking the dog and thanks to so many at church for covering my work duties.
          There really is nothing like the flu to put one in a Lenten frame of mind.  Rather than deciding what to give up for Lent, the flu decided for me.  I can’t watch Bluey with my granddaughter.  I can’t go to my usual round of programs, worship, and coffee with congregants.  I can’t write sermons at the bookstore café or shoot the breeze with Fan in her office.  Flu took my keys and said, you’re grounded.  And I have tried to lean in and be sick the way I believe others should be sick:  by actually resting; resting as in sleeping; sleeping in the middle of the sunlit day, which feels like a sin to me, truth be told.  Turns out, it doesn’t steal sleep from the night-time.  Probably because my body is sick.  Truth be told, it feels pretty delicious to be all-the-way asleep when I’m really tired, far better than that prickly, itchy, painful feeling of trying to stay awake and work when I am exhausted.
          So, instead of my usual routine, I’m trying to be here, body, mind and spirit.  I write in my journal.  I read.*  I’ve picked up sock knitting again.  I’ve swigged so much chicken soup I’m craving something actually to chew.  I’ve even drunk tea, about which I agree with Ted Lasso, it tastes like it looks – hot brown water.  But all this only has to do with Lent insofar as I choose to reap the value:  the value of staying in place and sitting still, which is healing.  Healing the body of the flu.  Healing the spirit of whatever keeps me on the move to the point of burnout.  Burnout serves nobody, least of all me.  Not a few of the people with this flu end up in the hospital with pneumonia.  Who has time for that?  And when did having time for that become the relevant question?  None of us is so necessary to the system we must risk pneumonia.  We are far, far, far too valuable for that.  
          All of which is easier said than done, amen?  Which is why I am so very grateful for the people in my system.  Kids, coworkers and congregation.  People with expectations of me whose clear expectation now is that I rest and get better.  Please take good care of yourselves as well.


~ peace & prayers, 
pastor annette

* Goodbye to a River, by John Graves ~ A memoir of a canoe trip on the Brazos River in West Texas in the 1950’s.  Reflections on nature, native peoples who lived there, WW2; and there’s a little dog named Passenger.  Gorgeous writing.  Highly recommended.

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